Ask IH: Am I committing product suicide by wanting to build a new ATS/hiring tool?
For context, I am an IH. I have access to some angel money but don't plan to raise capital in the foreseeable future. I've spent the past few months looking into the hiring space and after speaking to numerous people, I'm gravitating towards building a hiring solution (more colloquially called an ATS) for early stage, small and mid-sized startups.
I'm not operating in isolation. I have access to a number of recruiters to validate what I would build. That said, there are behemoths in this space - the frontrunners being Greenhouse and Lever, with a long tail.
I do feel slight hesitation though when I look at the number of options in the market and how feature-dense most modern ATS' have become (a reason for their clunky complexity). I do think there's an opening in the market for a solution specifically aimed at companies under 500, but it needs to be phenomenally better at the things it does. Almost like a Superhuman for ATS.
Have any of you built products in crowded, demanding categories before? What were your learnings?
ATS systems are pretty crowded not only with solutions tailored to it, but also things like Airtable. I'm operating in a similar space with Alcamine (https://alcamine.com/) and think there's a bigger opportunity for a sourcing tool. People are always looking for talent and think firms are more open for paying for access to a new community over a way to track them.
ATS systems also need to integrate with a lot of services so unless you have a couple people signed up as early adopters it's going to be a tough road. Good luck if you keep going down the road!
I actually don't disagree with you that ATS is a tough road for the reasons you outlined. What is weird is in spite of this, every ATS (barring may be Greenhouse/Lever) is clunky and actually makes the job of the recruiter/hiring manager more work. One of the main reasons is that most ATS' try to do too much and end up not optimizing for the key workflows. They're still spreadsheets-turned-into-software vs re-thinking the experience on both ends (recruiter and candidate).
I do believe there's room for fresh thinking, but you're right - it's a challenging and uphill climb. OTOH, companies are more ready for newer marketplaces and talent communities since sourcing is always a challenge. Building a community comes with its own challenge, of course. I think sourcing automation tools are beaten to death and I'm not sure there's anything left to extract. Spamming the heck out of talent is the MO there and there are many tools that help you do that pretty well.
What you're building is interesting in that you're looking at it from the perspective of people who are flooded with recruiter outreach. What's the response been like?
What have your learnings been operating in this space?
Before I was a developer, I was a tech recruiter for ~ 4 years. I've now been on all sides of hiring as an agency recruiter, internal recruiter and as a developer interviewing other developers. I am constantly surprised at how many people (and how much money) are trying to build ATS'. As an internal recruiter, you could do your job with an excel spreadsheet if you needed to.
I think the products like: Workable, Greenhouse, Lever, Hired.com, even LinkedIN and then Beamery (CRM) do what you need as an internal recruiter. I can't even think of any pain points that a new ATS could potentially solve.
I think that if you were to build an ATS, then you'd be a long way behind the established products and so would need a USP that was both game-changing and not easily implementable by the competition.
It's interesting that you say that there are no pain points a new ATS could solve. Half the recruiters I speak to complain about their ATS - takes too long to do what they need to do, ATS' make their job harder, not easier and still lead to a poor overall candidate and recruiter experience. GH and Lever are much better than most but you have to pay.
This tells there might be room for a fresh take on what ATS' do. Now, you can't just make a prettier UI and do the same thing slightly differently. It would have to be a bottom-up rethink of the recruiter and candidate experience and focus on a few things done really well. A Superhuman for ATS essentially.
Of course, that doesn't negate what you're saying -- I recognize that it is a huge uphill climb given the crowded market, feature/integration demands, and existing ATS entrenchment in orgs. Could you do what an ATS does with just Airtable, Typeform, and Zapier? I absolutely think so, but setting that up in a seamless and powerful manner in itself will require consultants to come in and do it for you. Recruiters aren't equipped to do that.
Curious to hear your thoughts on what I said.
EDIT: one more thing, if you are trying to cater to enterprise needs, building an ATS I would think is almost suicidal. The room to build one is more in the SMB/mid-market segment.
I think another point that I didn't make is that, at a small company, there is a lot more to the job of an internal recruiter than dealing with the ATS. i.e. if the goal is to improve the work of an internal recruiter, there are much more important areas to look at that the ATS.
In my opinion, a good recruiter could manage their candidates on a pen and paper. It's a very straightforward and linear process: CV Review -> Recruiter Call -> Tech Test -> Onsite Interview (other companies have additional, unnecessary steps).
I'd be surprised if the ATS was actually to blame for poor candidate experience and not the recruiter themselves.
From my experience, the biggest pain point an internal recruiter has is booking in interviews. If there was a tool to automatically suggest a time and room (zoom nowadays) that works for all interviewers and the candidate's schedule, that's a problem worth solving.
interviewschedule.com
My company (25 employees, probably 10-15 hires in the last year) has been running on Google Hire, which they've announced the end of life for in september. We chose GH because it had most of the features the bigger guys like Lever and Greenhouse did, at a fraction of the price, and because for obvious reasons it's well integrated into Google Calendar. There are just a lot of things that, while you could probably do them in Airtable, work out of the box and make your life easier. To pick a random example, not being able to see anyone else's interview feedback until you first post your own.
We have been inundated with people trying to sell us ATS's since the EOL announcement, but have yet to find one with such good value for the price point. The bigger SaaS players seem to be in a constant race to go up market and lock in big annual contracts. If you can profitably ship software at a lower price, I believe there'd be a market for it.
It would not be crazy to see if you could build something like this as a premium template built on top of Airtable. Good luck, and message me if you have a beta.
EDIT: The one we are most likely to look is Workstream, whereas all the others (Lever, Greenhouse, etc.) are $5k/year or higher.
@GregCohn I'm in fact prototyping a no-code ATS (on top of Airtable and Zapier) currently. From what I'm seeing so far, I'm fairly confident it does better than many existing ATS' in the market :) (surprised me too).
What sold you on Workstream? (especially because it seems like it's geared more towards hiring hourly workers according to their LI)
@v1l would love to jump on your alpha version. am a heavy user of airtable as an ats like solution within my own startup, have intensively used and combined several similar alternative solutions to often too static/complex ATS....still searching for the best setup;)
We haven't zeroed in on it as a decision, but it's on our shortlist I think because of price. It seems to have a lot of the basics that we use, e.g. calendar integration, notifications, integration with job boards, etc.
My best advice is to take a look in your competitors kitchen, identify problems, and aim to solve these first.